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Liberal Arts and Business

Bridging the Gulf with Reasonable Accommodation

Todd S. Hutton, President, Utica College

In a recent interview with Dick Hersh, the President of Trinity
College, Katherine Grayson asked whether there is sufficient time to
save liberal arts education. Although her reference was specific to the
completion of a study documenting learning outcomes in 1,200 students
across the country, the question itself is both intriguing and
alarming. It is intriguing because it suggests that at least some
people in our society believe that a centuries-old tradition is at the
precipice of collapse. It is alarming because social and market forces
may indeed be at work, reacting to perceptions of rigidity and
irrelevancy in the liberal arts.

I would answer Katherine
Grayson by saying that the liberal arts do not need saving. They need
defining, clarifying, interpreting, revising, and adapting, but not
saving.

I will devote little time in this paper to exclaiming
the benefits of a liberal arts education. Volumes have been written on
this subject over the decades, and especially during those times when
the value of the liberal arts cycles into the public consciousness. I
will, instead, focus my attention on the two other objectives of the
Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Symposium: 1) The problems that
hamper a more effective relationship between the liberal arts and
business, and 2) those action steps that can make a difference, that
is, create a more symbiotic relationship between the liberal arts and
business.

The first problem, and one that we must acknowledge at
the onset of the symposium, is that the liberal arts are not
monolithic. Our use of the term makes it seem so, but the limitations
of labels and our inability to express the many differences and nuances
among different conceptions of liberal study obscure the fact that
there is no one definition of what constitutes the liberal arts. For
example, What should belong in the "core" curriculum of a college? Does
a liberal arts curriculum include business economics? Can a Bachelor of
Fine Arts in Theatre be considered a liberal arts degree or are the
only "legitimate" liberal arts degrees Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of
Science degrees in an arts and science discipline? Questions such as
these illustrate the different perspectives on the nature of the
liberal arts, and institutions have answered such questions in many
different ways. A century ago, the disciplines of sociology and
psychology were stepchildren of the arts and sciences. It was only in
the last half of the last century that computer science found its way
into liberal arts curricula. As society has evolved, so has the
definition of the liberal arts.

The notion of the liberal arts
is also confounded by the imprecise and evolving classifications we
have for colleges and universities, as well as by the market decisions
that determine the use of the words "college" or "university." Take,
for example, the classifications defined by the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching. Prior to 1994, the Foundation classified
baccalaureate institutions that awarded more than half of the their
degrees in the arts and sciences as Liberal Arts Colleges I & II,
with the distinction between the two based upon the composite SAT score
of entering first-year students. In 1994 the Foundation changed the
name of the classifications to "Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges
I" and "Baccalaureate Colleges II." Institutions included in either of
these classifications had to award 40 percent or more of their
baccalaureate degrees in liberal arts fields. In other words, an
institution could award 60 percent of its undergraduate degrees in
professional fields but still be classified as a liberal arts college.
With the most recent revision in 2001, Carnegie returned to the 50
percent threshold and revised the terms to "Baccalaureate
Colleges-Liberal Arts" and "Baccalaureate Colleges-General." If we add
to the equation the fact that a liberal arts college with a traditional
arts and science curriculum (whatever that is), one master's degree,
and 1,200 students can call itself a university; a college with a
medical school may call itself a college; and a college with eight
master's degrees and a two doctorates cannot (at least in one state)
call itself a university, it is no wonder there may be some confusion,
and even qualms, among general public about what might constitute a
liberal arts education. While the issues of classification and
market-induced labeling do not speak directly to the question of the
definition and content of the liberal arts, they do help frame the
context for a dialogue about the relationship between the liberal arts
and business.

A third problem relates closely to the question of
definition. It seems that there is a need for academic and business
discussants to ask the question, How much of the liberal arts is enough
to call a student's course of study a liberal arts education? With
regional accrediting bodies requiring that general education constitute
a substantial portion of a student's course of study, whether at small
"liberal arts" colleges or major research universities, can we say that
most students today are receiving a liberal arts education? Or is it a
matter that some receive a "pure" liberal education, that is, general
education and a liberal arts major and minor, as opposed to general
education and a career-related major with either a liberal arts or
vocational minor or additional courses in the major? I agree with Joan
Stark and Malcolm Lowther who insisted fifteen years ago that liberal
and professional study need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, the
demands of the world in which we live today require new ways of
thinking about old divisions between the liberal arts and professional
programs. Stark and Lowther put it aptly, "The crux of today's
educational problem is how to integrate liberal and professional study
effectively, building upon the best that each has to offer." There are
numerous obstacles to achieving this lofty goal, not the least of which
is the question of the liberal arts definition. Stark and Lowther
found, unsurprisingly, that professional studies faculty and liberal
arts faculty tended to define the liberal arts differently.

It
has been my experience in recent years that the differences rest
primarily in the epistemology of the liberal arts, although I suspect
that my own liberal arts faculty would take issue with me on this
statement. Certainly professional curricula have appropriated language
and goals related to skills, attitudes, and sensibilities that were
once the domain of the liberal arts. Stated simply, it might be said
that where professional study was once about learning how to "do" and
liberal arts was once about learning how to "think," the professions
have made a concerted effort to bring "doing" and "thinking" closer
together within their own curricula. A look at the newly adopted goals
of Utica College's revised business curriculum and at the goals of
other professional programs such as physical therapy reveals learning
objectives that we once reserved for the liberal arts. For example, we
expect business majors to develop a capacity for critical thinking
(e.g., incisiveness, skepticism), the ability to think broadly, to work
outside the confines of the customary, and to master skills of analysis
and synthesis through research. We also expect them to understand and
respond positively to diversity, to understand and apply ethical
principles and principles of social responsibility, to understand the
challenges and opportunities of globalism (e.g., interdependent
economies), and to demonstrate competency in verbal and written
communication. One might say that these goals sound like a liberal arts
education, with content being the primary differentiator between a
business curriculum and a liberal arts major.

With knowledge
expanding exponentially and with spirited debates continuing about the
nature and content of the liberal arts-fueled in part by arguments a
decade and a half ago in such works as The Closing of the American Mind
and Cultural Literacy-it is apparent that questions about the
definition of the liberal arts will not be answered any time soon . We
must therefore ask ourselves whether the need to develop a more
symbiotic relationship between the liberal arts and business is more a
question of human will-particularly on the part of faculty and academic
administrators-than it is a question of knowledge and skills. If the
problem does indeed revolve around the former, then the "action steps
that can make a difference" will need to revolve around strategies
designed to engage liberal arts faculty and business leaders in
dialogue and mutual efforts to support the integration of liberal and
professional learning.

Among the actions steps that may be worth CIC's consideration:

Learn from the work of the University of Michigan's Professional
Preparation Network and from the faculty at other institutions like
Syracuse University. Initiatives such as these may offer insights to
strategies that can bridge the liberal arts-business gulf.

Following the Symposium, present the results and schedule
further dialogue with academic deans and presidents at their respective
CIC institutes in November and January.

Develop an agreement and alliance with a national organization
such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sponsor symposia in cities
throughout the country where CIC institutions are located. The symposia
would have as a focus 1) dialogue among liberal arts faculty and
business leaders with the goal of developing better understanding of
each other's professional values and goals, definitions of the liberal
arts, and existing intersections between the purposes and outcomes of
liberal arts curricula and business practice; and 2) identification of
concrete and specific ways that faculty and business leaders can bridge
the perceived gulf between liberal arts curricula and engagement in
business enterprise by alumni of the liberal arts.

Engage organizations like the Association to Advance Collegiate
Schools of Business (AACSB) to examine the liberal arts components of
business education and to co-sponsor the symposia with the Chamber of
Commerce.

It has been said that overcoming physical barriers for people with
disabilities is really a matter of overcoming attitudinal barriers. It
is the same with the disaffection between the liberal arts and
business. And the solution is the same: reasonable accommodation, in
spirit and practice.

Grayson, Katherine, "Liberal Ed in Crisis," in University Business, January 2003, 14-19.

Stark,
Joan S. and Malcolm A. Lowther. Strengthening the Ties That Bind:
Integrating Undergraduate Liberal and Professional Study, Report of the
Professional Preparation Network, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI: The Regents of the University of Michigan, 1988.

Bloom,
Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has
Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987; and Hirsch, Jr., E.D. Cultural
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1987.